Dear Democracy Now! visitor,

You turn to Democracy Now! for ad-free news you can trust. Maybe you come for our daily headlines. Maybe you come for in-depth stories that expose corporate and government abuses of power. Democracy Now! brings you crucial reporting like our coverage from the front lines of the standoff at Standing Rock or news about the movements fighting for peace, racial and economic justice, immigrant rights and LGBTQ equality. We produce our daily news hour at a fraction of the budget of a commercial news operation—all without ads, government funding or corporate sponsorship. How is this possible? Only with your support. If every visitor to this site in December gave just $10 we could cover our basic operating costs for 2017. Pretty exciting, right? So, if you've been waiting to make your contribution to Democracy Now!, today is your day. It takes just a couple of minutes to make sure that Democracy Now! is there for you and everybody else in 2017.

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

California state Attorney General and former Oakland mayor. He served as governor of California from 1974 to 1982 and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1992 presidential election, defeating Bill Clinton in five states.

Voters in thirty-five states will be casting their ballot for more than the next president of this country Tuesday. They will also be deciding on more than 150 ballot initiatives in states across the country. We look at one of the most closely watched: Proposition 5 in California, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act. We host a debate with California state Attorney General Jerry Brown and Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance. [includes rush transcript]

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMYGOODMAN: Voters in thirty-five states will be casting their ballot for more than the next president of this country. They will also be deciding the fate of 153 ballot initiatives on subjects ranging from gay marriage to renewable energy, affirmative action, abortion, the prison system, stem cell research, children’s health insurance and the safety of the farm animal.

It’s an important issue in California, where twelve propositions will appear on the state ballot Tuesday. Proposition 5, or the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, would require the state of California to expand and increase funding and oversight for individualized treatment and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent drug offenders and parolees and reduce criminal consequences of nonviolent drug offenses.

A wide coalition of supporters say it will help reduce overcrowding in the state’s burgeoning prison population, the largest in the country. They also argue it could change the way the war on drugs has been waged domestically, by providing treatment rather than jail for nonviolent drug offenses.

But the proposition has a number of opponents, including five California governors, the California prison guards union and the National Drug Control Policy Director. They argue it’s expensive, sets up an unwieldy and unaccountable bureaucracy, and have called it a "drug dealer’s bill of rights."

Today, we host a debate on California’s Proposition 5. Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Alliance Network, the leading organizations in the US promoting alternatives to the war on drugs. He supports Prop 5 and joins me here in our firehouse studio in New York.

We’re joined on the telephone by California Attorney General and former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, served as governor of California from ’74 to ’82 and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1992 presidential election, defeating Bill Clinton in five states. Jerry Brown is opposed to Proposition 5.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ethan Nadelmann, let’s begin with you. Why do you support it?

ETHANNADELMANN: Well, this is a model of how to be dealing with the problems of prison overcrowding and with the drug problem in the United States. California prisons’ population has virtually tripled in recent decades. They were spending at least $5 billion on the prison system in 2000; now it’s $10 billion. It’s eating up ten percent of the state budget. They have the highest recidivism rate in the country among state prison systems. People who have drug problems just keep being cycled more and more back into the system.

So, basically, with Prop 5, which you have as a model for how to deal with this, it’s based upon all of the recommendations of former governors’ independent commissions. It’s one that would reduce the California prison population by roughly 20,000 nonviolent offenders, in a way that would simultaneously reduce crime and recidivism. It would effectively shift a billion dollars a year from prison and parole over to the treatment and rehabilitation side. It would save taxpayers over $2 billion, because new prisons would not need to be built. And it would hold people accountable, not just the people getting caught up because of drug problems; it would also hold the drug court judges and the rest of the criminal justice system accountable. One thing that California has lacked horribly over the last few decades is any notion of accountability on the part of people in the prison-industrial complex. That’s what we’re seeing right now.

JERRYBROWN: Well, I couldn’t differ more from what he’s saying. First of all, it’s profoundly undemocratic. To change any of its hundreds of provisions scattered over thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pages requires a four-fifth majority. That is completely against the notion of majoritarian democracy.

Number two, it is so abstruse, so esoteric, that I would bet you there aren’t five people in the world that even understand it. It’s extremely difficult to gather. It’s like one of these complicated mortgage instruments that, just by their complexity, they act as a deception on the user. There’s no way the voters, by voting — by being asked to vote yes or no, can really respond intelligently to such a grab bag of provisions.

Number three, there’s no proof that this is going to reduce the prison population. In California, more than 60 percent of the prisoners leave prison each year. That’s 120,000 people. The problem is, they come back. And they come back because they don’t have the education, they don’t have the training, they don’t have the job skills, and they don’t have the supervision while they’re in the community.

And what should have been done was to present to the people a simple measure that could be understand — could be understood, and that could include more of the indeterminate sentence, which was abolished. And I have to say, I did that back in the ’70s. When I was governor, the recidivism rate, the first few years before we changed that law, was under 30 percent. Now it is up to 60 to 70 percent. We have far fewer people in prison, and the prison budgets were lower. Nadelmann and his friends created Prop 36. The prisons have risen in spite of that, I believe empowering the drug courts, giving them more money, giving more room for training, more room for supervision and reentry programs. We have a $7 billion program ready to go under an AB900 program, where the state hasn’t been able to spend it.

Finally, the complexity of these two bureaucracies, one having twenty-one voting members, one having twenty-three, is going to bog down — it’s full of providers who get the money that some of the — that one of the bureaucracies mandates and defines. This thing is a gigantic mess that is not going to reduce prison populations. It’s going to not help people. Drug addiction is a very powerful force, and you need accountability, short stays in jail, particularly, that the drug courts provide. Nadelmann and his friends wouldn’t work with the drug courts. They have a hostility to it. Their real agenda is to legalize drugs. I live in a drug-infested neighborhood with halfway houses on my block. I’ve been there for five years. I can tell you, it’s a horror out in the streets when you see these people. You’ve got to provide some coercion along with help and treatment and education.

AMYGOODMAN: Ethan Nadelmann?

ETHANNADELMANN: Well, let me just put it this way: Jerry Brown is bought and paid for by the prison-industrial complex.

ETHANNADELMANN: Right now, Jerry, you want to be governor -— Jerry, you want to be governor one day, you —- there’s a $1 million ad campaign paid for by the prison guards.

JERRYBROWN: You know, what about the billionaires who are funding you?

ETHANNADELMANN: Excuse me. Jerry. Jerry.

JERRYBROWN: You’ve got [inaudible] billionaires -—

ETHANNADELMANN: Jerry, why don’t you stop talking and let me talk?

JERRYBROWN: — that keep you afloat.

ETHANNADELMANN: Jerry? Jerry, there’s a one —-

AMYGOODMAN: OK. Attorney General Jerry Brown -—

ETHANNADELMANN: OK, yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: — we’re going to give you equal time to respond.

ETHANNADELMANN: Yes, OK. There’s now a $1 million paid ad campaign on TV in the Bay Area featuring Jerry Brown, the guy who’s supposed to be in charge of the system. This guy stood up with three Republican governors and the former governor, Gray Davis, who took millions of dollars from the prison guards union to denounce his initiative. He says this thing is anti-democratic? It’s anti-democratic when the prosecutors and the prison guards union put millions of dollars into the system to buy the politicians going in.

This initiative right here is based upon the best of scientific evidence. And when you look at what’s in here, when this thing was not put on the ballot —-

JERRYBROWN: That’s not true. That is simply not true.

ETHANNADELMANN: Jerry? Jerry? I allowed you to talk. Give me the politeness to allow me to talk as well.

JERRYBROWN: Alright. Go ahead.

ETHANNADELMANN: OK? We did not move forward, me and my colleagues in California, without having first gone to talk to people in Sacramento. And state legislators said to us, “You know, we normally don’t like the ballot initiative process, but the system in Sacramento is busted and broken, and the only way to get sensible, responsible sentencing reform in the state is through the ballot initiative process.”

When this thing was drafted, we pulled in all of the best experts around the state. If the drug court judges are opposed to this thing, it’s solely because of ideology, because they do not want to be held accountable. They do not want to be held accountable. So this is about helping the -— and when Jerry Brown says that this is not going to reduce cost or this is not going to reduce California’s prison population, he is not acknowledging the results, not of us and of the advocates, but of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, an independent body that has concluded that this is the only initiative on the ballot that will save taxpayers money, and this will responsibly reduce the prison population. This is basically about giving people with drug problems a second chance. It has got accountability up the gazoo for people who are involved in any sorts of other crimes.

Go to the Huffington Post and read the blogs that are done by Dan Abrahamson and Dave Fratello, both co-authors of Prop 5, who Jerry Brown did not bother even to talk to, notwithstanding our efforts to try to talk with him. Then you can read Jerry Brown’s blog and read the rejoinder to it that will be up later today, and you’ll see that one sentence after another in his blog is full of mistakes, full of inaccuracies, full of exaggerations. He is doing the worst possible thing for the people of California.

AMYGOODMAN: California Attorney General Jerry Brown, your response?

JERRYBROWN: You know, it’s kind of a sad — because this is really — the whole drug addiction is a tragedy. And this kind of ad hominem argument is really not to the point. The prison guards, it’s true, have put up ads. The ads, by the way, that I was in did not say vote no. It said go to — go look at this, and I expressed the arguments of both sides.

ETHANNADELMANN: Yeah, one press conference after another saying something —-

AMYGOODMAN: Don’t interrupt.

JERRYBROWN: Wait a minute, Ethan. Let me talk. Secondly, the other side has, you know, a handful of billionaires that paid for all this. This isn’t subject to any kind of public debate.

ETHANNADELMANN: Right, billionaires who are the leading advocates of human rights around the world -—

JERRYBROWN: They list this thing as secret, and you would not talk to the judges. These are —-

JERRYBROWN: You’ve become totally overcome by your feelings here. Look, I care about this stuff. I know what drug addiction is about. I see it every day in Oakland. And I don’t think without the power of some threat of incarceration by the drug court judges you’re going to get anywhere.

ETHANNADELMANN: Jerry, you didn’t talk to a single person on drug treatment!

AMYGOODMAN: Just one second.

ETHANNADELMANN: Sheesh!

JERRYBROWN: God, you’re — what’s wrong with you, Ethan?

ETHANNADELMANN: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

JERRYBROWN: You’ve become completely obsessed.

ETHANNADELMANN: Jerry, you got the numbers wrong.

JERRYBROWN: Let me say a word or two.

ETHANNADELMANN: You got the stats wrong. You got the facts wrong.

JERRYBROWN: Look, I’m not going to let you talk, if you’re not going to let me say what my piece is here. I am as concerned about drug addiction as you are. The prison guards are now joining with plaintiffs’ attorneys to try to, you know, totally change the prison system. Yes, we need some initiatives, but this thing cannot be understood by the average person. It’s a complete abuse. And the fact that you won’t let it be changed except by four-fifths after you lock into law so many esoteric provisions whose consequence no rational person can understand, this is not about saving money, it’s writing in little entitlements that the plaintiffs’ bar will sue on, and it will cost billions of dollars. It will leave these poor unfortunate people mired in their addiction. Some of them need the hammer of a drug court.

And the drug court judges and all the — the Judges Association and all the probation chiefs in California are against this thing. So just don’t talk about the prison guards. They’re something on their own there. I believe when we have the indeterminate sentence and we have work in prison and get real skill training, that — and we have a parole system where we could supervise and help people, that’s when we had low prison — the lower incarceration rates and better —- lower recidivism.

AMYGOODMAN: OK. Ethan -—

JERRYBROWN: That’s what we need to get back to.

AMYGOODMAN: Ethan Nadelmann, your response?

JERRYBROWN: I’m not saying the legislature has been any good. They’ve been a disaster. The system —-

ETHANNADELMANN: You know, Jerry, quite frankly, when the voters of California -— when the voters — Jerry, when the voters — Jerry?

ETHANNADELMANN: Proposition 5 improves upon Prop 36. The reason the prison population stopped — started heading up again was because your friends in the prison-industrial complex hijacked the damn thing.

JERRYBROWN: You don’t use [inaudible]. Make your point on their own merits.

ETHANNADELMANN: They hijacked the damn thing, OK?

AMYGOODMAN: Why do you specifically focus on the prison guards? What is their interest in this, Ethan Nadelmann?

ETHANNADELMANN: Well, I think the prison guards — I mean, what is the one union in America who gets —- becomes more powerful and gets their overtime pay by incarcerating as many of their fellow citizens as possible? That’s the prison guards union. And when they gave Gray Davis millions of dollars, or when they’re spending a million dollars right now for a puff piece featuring Jerry Brown, you know, denouncing Prop 5, that’s corrupt.

JERRYBROWN: I think, first of all -—

ETHANNADELMANN: He wants to talk about democracy?

JERRYBROWN: — there’s a corruption of the process —-

ETHANNADELMANN: You know, a ballot initiative process has the opportunity for the public to say yea or nay. But when you have people inside the system, inside the system -—

JERRYBROWN: The prison guard thing is completely off the point.

ETHANNADELMANN: Excuse me, Jerry. When the prison guards union are buying the politicians and buying the political system and buying a guy who wants to be governor —-

JERRYBROWN: What do you think your billionaire friends are doing?

ETHANNADELMANN: —- that’s not democratic. That’s not democratic.

JERRYBROWN: You’re being bought and paid for by [inaudible] billionaires.

AMYGOODMAN: OK, final response —-

ETHANNADELMANN: You know, maybe, maybe -—

AMYGOODMAN: — Attorney General Jerry Brown —-

ETHANNADELMANN: —- maybe —-

AMYGOODMAN: —- final response?

JERRYBROWN: My response is this —-

ETHANNADELMANN: —- if the drug people in drug treatment had half the money of the prison guards, Jerry —-

JERRYBROWN: —- if he could keep quiet for a second, which I doubt.

ETHANNADELMANN: — you’d have a different perspective on this.

AMYGOODMAN: OK. We’re going to give you the final word, Attorney General Jerry Brown.

JERRYBROWN: Yeah, the judges, who are most objective, they’re opposing this thing.

ETHANNADELMANN: Yeah, but they’re staffing [inaudible] —-

AMYGOODMAN: Let him respond.

JERRYBROWN: You know, prison guards are one piece. You guys wrote it in secret. You won’t work with the drug courts, who, in many cases, have over a 50 percent success rate. And I think what your Prop 38 did, it has not had success. Over 70 percent of the people drop out of the damn program. It’s not working.

JERRYBROWN: And I think if you want to use an initiative, you need an understandable initiative that will return the indeterminate sentence, give more job training, more parole supervision and give some decent treatment that actually works.

ETHANNADELMANN: Yeah, Jerry, and it wouldn’t have been a secret if you had answered your damn phone.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. I want to thank Attorney General Jerry Brown of California -— he is opposed to Proposition 5 — and Ethan Nadelmann, who is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance and Drug Policy Alliance Network. Obviously, this is a very controversial issue. The vote is tomorrow, and we will certainly follow up. We’ll be announcing, if the results are in tomorrow night or the next day in the morning — we’ll be here to broadcast not only what’s happening with the presidential race and on down with political races, but also ballot initiatives around the country.

Non-commercial news needs your support

independent global news

Democracy Now! is a 501(c)3 non-profit news organization. We do not accept funding from advertising, underwriting or government agencies. We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work. Please do your part today.